Early years programs lose critical funding / Hotline and website will replace popular Community Childcare Resource and Referral
MetroValley Newspaper Group -- Chilliwack Progress
28 Jan 2007
EXCERPT

Childcare resources in B.C. are being thinned out, but they won't be entirely lost to a recent monetary shortfall, says the Minister of State for Early Childhood Development.

Linda Reid, MLA in Richmond, spoke to The Progress this week regarding an announcement that certain programs, including the Childcare Resource and Referral program, would be shut down in favour of B.C.-wide, government-run information websites and phone lines.

"This was not an easy decision to be made," she says. "And these are not dollars I would choose to take out of the system."

But it was a necessary step in dealing with an unexpected stoppage of federal transfer payments....

The loss in funding means the Liberals have opted to streamline early intervention services and childcare referral in an effort to continue offering basic services for parents and their children. But Chilliwack's popular CCRR office will close October 1 this year, while Abbotsford's and others will close in April. In its place will be a new website with continually updated lists of local daycare providers.

"It will be updated sometimes several times a day," Reid says, and will provide equal access to B.C.'s many remote communities.

"We are just now looking at different services that we can provide, and how to reframe as we go forward," she says. "We needed to find some flex in the system, as we went from a budget $14 million for that program, to $9 million. We will do our best to keep the service, but we will have to change how we deliver it." ..

"I'm basically the bearer of bad news," she says, and it's clear the former teacher and language therapist is not happy with the recent cutbacks.

Reid will be the keynote speaker at a public forum this Monday evening -- a forum planned before this latest announcement, and one intended to be more celebratory than critical.

"I will basically engage in any conversation the community wants to have," she says, but not one to mince words, she later adds that the general public as well as those with vested interests in early childhood education should feel "welcome to direct their anger at the parties responsible." ...